


four thirteen

by OneSkyOneDestiny



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abuse, Depression, Mental Disintegration, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Multi, Post-Sburb, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-04-10 12:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4391855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneSkyOneDestiny/pseuds/OneSkyOneDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You noticed the signs about a month in, Dave was never one to make a big deal out of anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. John

**Author's Note:**

> This is a much unimproved vent.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You noticed the signs about a month in, Dave was never one to make a big deal out of anything.

The sticky note reads: A laptop, Love from Dad. 

You are ten years old and you have never been so happy about a birthday present in your life. 

You install pesterchum right away.

And then one week and five days later you find him through an adorable girl named Jade, the boy in the red, the ironic cool kid, your best-friend. You spend so many nights talking to him about the silliest things, he sends you Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comics, while you teach him how to do magic tricks with a pack of your Dad’s old cards. 

Eventually he introduces you to Rose, his female counterpart. 

John, Jade, Dave, Rose

The four of you are inseparable together, you and Dave, even more so.

And then you play Sburb.  
\----  


After Sburb you were not the same. 

You knew that you wouldn’t adjust back to the routine of everyday life. Suburban life seemed so abnormal to you now, you couldn’t be at home for more than an hour without bursting into tears. 

So you left Washington and rented an apartment.

The girls found their own arrangements. But you and Dave lived together, like you had planned to when you were kids.  
You noticed the signs about a month in, Dave was never one to make a big deal out of anything. 

You remember the first time it happened. It was a boiling hot afternoon, and you and Dave were going out to have a few drinks on the balcony.  
\----  
You go outside and put some glasses on the table. You see him kneeling on the grass, cradling something. His shades are lopsided, and his platinum hair is tousled like he’s been clenching it. 

“Hey Dave, what are you doing down there? Get your lazy butt up here before I drink your beer for you!”

No reply.

“Hey Dave, is something the matter?” 

No reply.

“I’m coming down there, okay?”

No reply.

You scramble down the stairs, and find the front door already unlocked, swung open, for anyone to stroll in. You walk outside and find him in the same position unmoving. 

You see it now, the dead crow, the dire thing he’s been cradling in his arms for god knows how long. Its neck is snapped, and its left leg is bent in an upwards position. You see a small trail of blood from the road to the front lawn.

One single thought registers in your mind.

He’s carried it back here.

“Dave-“

“He started out like this, the other me. It’s really a mindfuck when you think about it, isn’t it? I always hated crows, they used to come and peck at the window of my bedroom in Bro’s apartment. I kind of miss it actually.” 

After Sburb you were not the same, and Dave was not either. 

You put a hand on his shoulder, a subtle but gentle reassurance. “You should come back in now, it looks like it might rain.”

An obvious lie, but Dave is too dazed to realise any different.  
\----  
You have a job at a telemarketing company, it’s not like being a stand-up comedian or working for a major film studio like Paramount or Disney or Fox.  
But it is a job, and it allows you to put food on the table. 

Dave used to work in the local garage part time, until he was fired for not showing up. He decided he’d rather stay at home in bed. 

No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get mad about it.

One evening you come home to discover stacks upon stacks of books on physics. Certain books on physics. 

The Philosophy of Space and Time, The Direction of Time, How we Measure Time, The Beginning of Time

He is sat on the couch, reading intently. His shades are off, a rare occasion. You see his red eyes glimmer with promise, as if he has unlocked some impossible secret, discovered some amazing solution, beaten some incredible riddle to make him omniscient, invincible, unstoppable to all of the problems life shouldn’t have been allowed to make someone as brilliant as him endure, you think. 

He cautiously turns a page, as if the book in his hands is invaluable to him. 

The Concept of Time Travel by Jerald F. Jones 

That night you have your first argument since you played Sburb. You would give anything to fly again, you tell him, but it’s never going to happen again, and he isn’t going to time travel again either. 

Sburb is a history that cannot be unwritten.  
\----  
A nightmare

You are running, running so fast but you cannot escape the monsters that are chasing you, you find Dave’s body around the next corner, decrepit and lifeless. 

You scream.

Suddenly you jolt up from your bed to a smashing sound in the next room.  
The nightmare is over. 

You find him there, cowering on the living room floor, clenching his bloody fist.  
You can’t help but feel like the incident is all your fault. Ever since your argument Dave shut himself off from any notion of time completely. There are no more days, hours, minutes, seconds or nights, just reality. 

The nightmare is not over.

So you gladly take the blame for this one, and for all the incidents beforehand. You cannot get help, you cannot get Dave help. There is no help for any of the Sburb sufferers. You are plagued with the glorious but limited knowledge of being gods. And like a god, this is your responsibility. And you will sure as hell do everything and anything to help the broken knight in front of you. 

He looks up at you, tentatively, with wide, fearful, childlike eyes. 

But he doesn’t cry. 

Dave Strider never cries.

A side effect of his brother’s conditioning, that he refuses to let go. 

And it breaks your heart. 

4:13 AM  
Your living room wall is red  
Your breathing is unnatural  
Your analogue clock is broken  
So is Dave Strider

 

 

And you are so fucking scared.


	2. Dave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John noticed the signs a month in. You were never one to make a big deal out of anything.

You awake to a burning sensation in your arm.  
Bandages, plasters, bloody knuckles and broken wrists.  
This is your reality and you wouldn’t have it any other way.  
Bro taught you to be strong, diligent, resistant, strategic in the heat of battle.

  
He also taught you to be reckless too. He didn’t teach you to be self-sacrificing though, that trait became part of you when you realised.

Realised what Bro had done.

  
How he had neglected you in your inculpable youth, how he had twisted your seemingly safe childhood into something more sinister. He fed you, clothed you and taught you what it meant to be a real man, with cold steel blades and laborious training.  
But it wasn’t enough and you know that now.

  
You knew that when you played Sburb.  
\-----  
Time on the meteor was extensive, exciting at first.

  
You, Terezi and Mayor would build the sickest of forts, play the illest of beats and warrant arrests on the badest, biggest criminals of can town. Life was sweet for a while, no more fighting, no more death, no more destruction.

  
But you knew it wouldn’t last, not with the clown around.

  
The dynamic trio, soon turned to the dynamic duo. You and the Mayor would still chill together, everything seemed fine really. But only from a glance…

  
You didn’t see her often, not anymore, not with the juggalo around and when you did you had to do everything to contain the fury inside you.

  
Teal and indigo stains, cuts and scrapes, the sickly sweet smell of stale faygo, this is what you associated with her now.

  
The self-assured, bright grin she used to bare and shrill laughter was gone. Replaced with anxiety. But most of all anger, anger at herself, anger at Gamzee and anger at perhaps you. Foreboding glares were thrown your way if you so much tried to interfere with any aspect of her black relations.

  
And so you drifted, your friendship fragile and battered by the troll that vowed to one day make your life a living hell, for your taunts towards beliefs and he had certainly kept his promise.  
\----  
Maybe it was meant to be, how else would you have fallen in love?

  
Realised the abuse you faced? Forgave yourself for not being enough?

  
Karkat Vantas was your light in the darkness, your beacon of hope in an unforgiving world.

  
You loved him and that was enough.

Or so you thought.  
\----  
John told you that sburb was the worst thing to have ever happened to him.

  
You could say with complete conviction, it was the worst thing to ever happen to you too.

  
Suburban life seemed so abnormal to you know; it was abnormal to John too.

  
So you left Texas and both rented an apartment. Things weren’t too bad, for a month, not too noticeable to John. He didn’t see how you would lose time, forget time, reality and fantasy blurring into one.  
\----  
You awake on the ground, newly cut, fresh grass beneath your feet. In one eye your vision is white, blinding almost; in the other dark and soft like it always is.

  
There it is.

  
The crow, the dead crow you pulled back here, in desperation of happier times. You wanted to remember, remember how it used to be.

  
The soft humming of your laptop while speaking on pesterchum, the sound of metal clinking as your Bro would train, the soft tapping of a crow’s foot against your windowsill.  
You couldn’t go back, you could never go back.

  
And then he noticed.

  
Suddenly your vision is filled with a hue of blue. Worried eyes, pursed lips, and a gentle tug. John takes you back inside.

\----

You sleep, but you don’t dream.

  
You expected nightmares by now, inescapable terrors of the past.

  
Instead nothing, nothing at all.

  
You sleep so often now, John stopped trying to motivate you a while ago.

  
Tiredness, you see it in his eyes, his face, and his posture.

  
He supports you from here on out, finically, emotionally, physically.

  
He forgives you for all of this, and you wish it could have been different.

  
Bro taught you to be strong, diligent, resistant, strategic in the heat of battle.  
He also taught you to be reckless too. He didn’t teach you to be self-pitying though, that trait became part of you when you realised.

  
Realised what John had done.  
\----  
He gave so many hours for you, protecting you, caring for you.

  
Eventually you had enough.

  
You would make it right, all of it right. You had to, you need to. There was no alternative, no option in your mind other than this. You were once a god, a god of time. When did that change, why did coming back to earth mean you had to be any different?

  
You would read, research, find a way to get your powers back.  
   Book one, no luck.  
          Book three, no luck.  
                           Book thirty one…

  
The Concept of Time Travel by Jerald F. Jones.

  
You had found it, you were in luck.

  
This was it, the way of bringing your short-lived godhood was in this book, you were sure of it.

  
That night you have your first argument since you’d played Sburb. John tells you he would give anything to fly again, but it’s never going to happen again, and you aren’t going to time travel again either.

  
Sburb is a history that cannot be unwritten.  
\----  
A nightmare.

  
You’ve won, it’s over, and you’re okay.

  
Lord English is dead.

  
So are your friends.

  
Terezi, John, Jade, Rose, Kanaya, Vriska, Roxy, Dirk, Jake, Jane

  
All gone.

  
So is your boyfriend

  
Karkat

  
All gone.  
\----  
You awake to find yourself clutching you fist. Your body shakes, you couldn’t stop it if you wanted to.  
Karkat might not be dead, not really.

But missing was the same thing to you. The nightmare is not over.

  
You can’t help but think John feels it’s his fault.

  
4:13 AM  
Your living room wall is red  
Your breathing is shallow.  
John’s analogue clock is broken.  
Maybe you are too.

  
  
You’re too far gone to care.

 


End file.
